


Clutch

by guanoo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Soulless Sam Winchester, Symbolism in American Scenery, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-07-13 02:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7135436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guanoo/pseuds/guanoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[<span class="u">6.16</span> | Sam realizes he was angry at the wrong person.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clutch

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance: this has a happy ending with unnecessarily dark and depressing implications. Sometimes I want to scratch my eyes out

Sam's lips press into a thin line as he stares out the windshield. "I blamed you," he reflects, at length, and it sounds so poetic with the orange light of dawn spilling over his face. It's almost amusing, the way his nose wrinkles with discomfort, the way he cuts his eyes over without really looking at Dean, checking for some reaction. Heck, if Dean didn't know what was coming, he'd be having a hearty laugh at his little brother's expense right now.

As it is, his smile feels like a grimace and he replies forcefully, "No idea what you're talking about," then flips the radio on, hoping that'll settle the matter. 

Sam waits for a commercial break and turns the volume down. "Dean, Samuel had something he was dying to tell me, and it wasn't how I was a philandering murderous douchebag without my soul."

"Guy had an alien worm in his brain, Sam!" Dean reasons. "He was speaking in tongues. He—"

"No, Dean, he wasn't! Look, everything he said checks with what little memory I have, and I'm starting to wonder, man—"

Dean gives a harsh sigh, interrupting.

Sam rushes on: "—I mean, I ... I did something. To you. Didn't I," he asks with a finality that makes Dean's skin crawl.

Silently cursing his brother for not dropping it, Dean decides to feign ignorance for as long as possible. "Something," he repeats skeptically, tapping his thumb on the wheel. "Oh, you did something all right. Doesn't mean you got me involved."

But it's the wrong thing to say, because Sam just gives a tight nod and keeps staring into the sunrise, like it can burn the thought from his mind. Within seconds, he's blinking back tears.  Dean would love to chalk it up to emo boy having a moment with the sunlight, but he knows all too well that Sam's become more stoic since he grew up, and if he's crying, there's probably a damn good reason for it. Bowing his head, Dean pulls off the highway and gets out. Doesn't bother slamming the door. At first, Sam doesn't follow him.

He wanders along a trail flanked by pine trees until it drops off in a precipice, and then he loiters there on the edge, watching the sun cross the valley, listening to the faint footfalls approaching from behind him. He lets Sam stand a few feet back without acknowledging him for a while.

If Sam hadn't just gotten his soul back, Dean might have worried about the man behind him reaching out and shoving him to his death.

After several long minutes, Dean grunts, without turning, "Bad enough that it happened. Do we really have to talk about it?"

He hears Sam shifting around. Then a quiet, hurt voice says, "Dean." Just his name, and nothing more, but it sounds like the beginning of a drawn-out penance— _the kind that lasts months; the precise kind, if Dean's honest, that he demanded from his brother after the whole Ruby thing_ —and that's more than Dean can handle right now. 

"Ask me how I'm coping and I _will_ punch you," he warns.

Sam says nothing, just crunches around back there, repressing a wet sniffle. Dean hears it anyway, hears the faint scraping sound as his brother rubs hands over his unshaven face. His voice softens involuntarily.

"Look, Sammy, it—" he stops short of saying it wasn't that bad, because with Sam forcing him to acknowledge it, he realizes— _vaguely, there's shit there he doesn't wish to examine_ —that there were a couple times it got ... well, kind of horrific.

_When he felt pinioned by love and let himself get talked into it, or worse, when he couldn't say no—when he wanted to escape his weak, defenseless body, was literally bested in physical strength, which, for someone like Dean, was unnerving in itself... When he didn't know if Sam had just raped him or if he was getting lost in his own tangled dreams, and Sam picked that moment to remind him of what a permissive slut he'd always been... When he got used to the filthy feeling that accompanied sex and started fumbling pick up lines... When he spread his legs because he hated himself... When he said yes but the latent undercurrent of violence where his stupid sweet baby brother should've been made Dean change his mind about consenting halfway through, only the heavy body blanketing his provided an unassailable reminder that he wasn't allowed to change his mind... When he changed his mind successfully for about two weeks before Sam got him on his back again... When he knew with absolute certainty that he'd fucked his little brother up beyond repair and that he earned everything that was happening to him, especially the loose, free-falling feeling in his gut... When he liked it... When he thought he didn't like it but the spunk on his belly begged to differ... When he was finally convinced, after months on alert, that his brother was just terribly damaged from the time in Hell—that night when he spread his legs and let Sam take what he wanted, only to find out the very next evening that an imposter had crawled into his bed..._

He settles instead for, "Wasn't you. You got nothing to be sorry for."

Muffled sounds tell him that Sam sat down heavily on some kind of rock, and that he's now crying in earnest. Dean turns, and Sam hardly notices, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve. New tears well up, and he scrubs those away too. 

Dean reaches down to caress his cheek, stop the useless rubbing, and tries not to feel hurt when Sam immediately recoils. Keeps his voice soft when he says, "don't cry, Sammy."

Sam squints between the pine trees to his left. Dean crouches at Sam's feet, gazing off between the trees towards whatever Sam sees out there.

After a long silence, he asks, "you leaving again?" His voice sounds strangled.

Sam's eyes snap to his, and they look at each other for a long moment while Dean's heart threatens to break his chest.

"Dean... no," he says gently. Then, tearing up again, he adds, "couldn't if I wanted to, and I don't—god, Dean, it's just..." Sam takes a shaky breath, then cuts to the chase. "I don't know how to be around you right now. I mean, I can't even bump into you without feeling guilty."

"Jesus, Sam."

"And I get these urges, like in the back of my mind? And it's scaring me, Dean, I think we should—"

But despite the reassurance, Dean isn't convinced, so before his brother can propose another fucking separation when he literally just got him back, (and he's got to look out for him now more than ever, to make sure some stray memory doesn't bring the whole house of cards down, _bang up job so far_ ) —he finds his mouth on his little brother's, keeping a tiny sliver of that madness alive. Sam doesn't kiss back at first, so Dean pulls his best panty-dropping technique, letting his mouth go all soft and coaxing Sam out with kitten licks and hands on his face, easing his hips between Sam's knees.

Sam finally gets with the program, and Dean's yanked to his feet and pressed up against a knobby pine tree. But just as Dean's getting hard, Sam stumbles back. Dean's heart gives a sick throb.

Panicked by the foreboding feeling of _distance_ , which hovers there, just beyond their horizon, Dean admits, "It wasn't ... what you think. I wanted it."

"That's bullshit, Dean." Sam says quietly.

Dean advances. "Oh really? Because the way I remember it, I didn't want you sleeping with other people. I drove you nuts until... well, til _that_ happened."

"That's bullshit and you know it!" Sam shoves Dean back, away from him, and Dean becomes keenly aware of the cliff. He'd have to stumble back about ten steps to fall off the ledge, but he can feel it, yawning wide behind his back, waiting to swallow him. Bizarrely, it seems to draw closer as Sam does.

Sam's inches away. "Maybe I should leave, but you just—you always assume I hate you when I'm just—! And it's not like you should be alone right now ... But if I stay ... Fuck, I can't do right by you," his voice grates with sorrow, and he presses his forehead into Dean's, shutting his eyes tightly.

Dean aches with uncertainty but he grips Sam's shoulders hard and says, "Stay."

Sam turns his face away. Dean pulls him back with both hands. "C'mon, stay."

Sam shifts, and Dean digs his fingers in, worried his brother will leave. "Stay," he begs, grabbing Sam's collar and tugging him close.

"Yeah," Sam says against his mouth, "Yeah, I think I will." Then he's kissing him wetly, getting tears on Dean's cheek, and groaning nonsense like  "Think I can't stop kissing you."

They kiss til they're panting breathless and break apart, hands dragging over each other's clothes, kisses falling on teeth and hair and exposed throats. Dean tries to be subtle about stepping closer, tightening his hold on his little brother, who's murmuring "Dean Dean Dean."

 

When they come to their senses, the morning has washed through the trees, blurring everything with light.

"God, you are so embarrassing," Dean mutters against Sam's chest.

"You worried we scandalized the wildlife?" Sam asks dryly, inclining his head towards the empty pine trees surrounding them.

"What if Ranger Rick comes poking through the underbrush?"

Sam chokes on his laugh, and, once he's breathing again, promptly informs Dean that he's a moron, and that Rick is a raccoon.

"I know." Dean's got his fingers absentmindedly stroking through Sam's silky hair when he says "Listen, Sammy. I'm not good with words, you know that, but ... I missed you."

Sam watches him with lips slightly parted, but his eyes are wet again, and Dean wonders if he said something wrong. Then Sam grabs his face in both hands, and a tear runs over his temple, and he says, "Dean ... _Dean_ ," like Dean is supposed to understand what the different inflections mean. But as Sam looks into his eyes and rubs calloused thumbs over his cheeks he thinks he sort of does. Anyway, the meaning becomes painfully obvious when the look turns into a kiss, a very long kiss, which ends in Sam wrapping his arms around Dean and tumbling him onto his back on the forest floor.


End file.
